Optimal favoritism in all-pay auctions and lottery contests

Jörg Franke, Wolfgang Leininger and Cédric Wasser

European Economic Review, 2018, vol. 104, issue C, 22-37

Abstract: We analyze the revenue-enhancing potential of favoring specific contestants in complete-information all-pay auctions and lottery contests with several heterogeneous contestants. Two instruments of favoritism are considered: head starts that are added to the bids of specific contestants and multiplicative biases that give idiosyncratic weights to the bids. In the all-pay auction, head starts are more effective than biases while optimally combining both instruments even yields first-best revenue. In the lottery contest, head starts are less effective than biases and combining both instruments cannot further increase revenue. As all-pay auctions revenue-dominate lottery contests under optimal biases, we thus obtain an unambiguous revenue-ranking of all six combinations of contest formats and instruments.

Keywords: All-pay auction; Lottery contest; Favoritism; Head start; Revenue dominance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D44 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Optimal Favoritism in All-Pay Auctions and Lottery Contests (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:104:y:2018:i:c:p:22-37

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2018.02.001

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